Hello 2024 Shark Madness Winner!

By: Christina Andrea Alvear

Image Source: (left to right) Head of a pelagic thresher shark (Alopias pelagicus) by PiRO/NOAA Observer program, public domain via Wikimedia commons.  Thresher Shark by Thomas Alexander CC by SA 4.0 via Wikimedia commons

Can a shark be simultaneously goofy and elegant at the same time? Sure it can! We are proud to announce 2024’s March Madness winner: the Pelagic Thrasher (Alopias pelagicus).  This shark reaches an average size of 10 ft and is blue gray with a white underbelly.  It has  puppy dog eyes, an elongated submarine body, long pectoral fins, and a remarkably long dagger-like tail.  Their unique hunting strategy is to swim up to a school of fish at 45 mph and then make a hard stop so that all that energy can extend to their whip-like tail forward to stun their prey.  This primary move is known as the overhead tail-slap.  When the shark’s prey movements become erratic and difficult to take down, the sharks also employ the sideways tail-slap. 

Diagram showing the motion of a Thresher shark’s tail slap generated from Oliver and colleagues’ research study. Image source: Oliver, S. P., Turner, J. R., Gann, K., Silvosa, M., & D'Urban Jackson, T. (2013). Image Source: Thresher sharks use tail-slaps as a hunting strategy. PloS one, 8(7), e67380. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0067380

Shark Diet
Pelagic thresher sharks whip out their tails to eat herrings, flying fishes, mackerels, and squid.  Depending on literature searches, their diet also includes the occasional crustacean and seagull.  These threshers can fully breach the waters like dolphins and whales so, perhaps they grab a bird as a quick snack!  (According to researchers, it is likely that they leap in the air instead, as a way of getting rid of parasites.)  Luckily, humans are off the menu.  They generally are shy and tend to stay away from divers.

Habitat
You can find these sharks in action in the open ocean of the Pacific, Indian, and Mediterranean sea.  They can also be found off the northeast coast of Taiwan, and  North American waters by California, and Mexico.  For divers, the  best location for divers to get a glimpse of these gray blue sharks are off the shores of Malapascua, an island in the Philippines.  It is difficult to understand their migratory patterns since there are few tagging studies of these creatures and it is difficult to study them in the open ocean.    

The breeding season of pelagic threshers is unknown.  What we do know is that female sharks have 1-2 pups over the course of 9 months.  These pups are cannibalistic in their mother’s  womb and feed on unfertilized eggs during development.  When they are born, they can reach sizes of 4 ft., almost half the size of their mothers.  This may be an evolutionary strategy to avoid being easy prey.

Predators
The shark’s natural predators are larger sharks, toothed whales, and humans who capture them for commercial and recreational fishing.  They are prized for their fins, hide for leather products, and organs for  medicinal and cosmetic products.  These wondrous tail whipping sharks are on the endangered list.    

Support Our Cause
With your help and support, you can help MISS support researchers of color interested in pursuing research to better understand and conserve these sharks.



Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates on our shark contenders for March Madness 2025!   


Interested in Learning More? Feel free to explore the MISS website and these links below. 

• https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/species-profiles/pelagic-thresher/
  
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3707734/
  
• https://www.sharkguardian.org/post/pelagic-thresher-shark#:~:text=Pelagic%20Threshers%20grow%20between%203,females%20having%20a%20longer%20lifespan.
  
• https://www.sharkguardian.org/post/pelagic-thresher-shark
• https://melissahobson.co.uk/thresher-shark/